Designing a Restaurant: Designing an Experience, Not Just a Space

Cüneyt Onur – Özge Kadayıfcı Restaurant architecture is not just the coming together of tables, chairs, a kitchen and lighting. A restaurant is a special architectural field where people, gastronomy, brand, business and space meet at the same time.

When we talk about restaurant design, what comes to mind first is usually floor area, the number of tables and the position of the kitchen, to which we add material and decoration choices. All of these matter. But for us, the real starting point of design is another question:

What kind of life will be lived in this space?

Because people don't go to restaurants only to eat. They meet, talk, celebrate, hold business meetings, spend a long evening, or sometimes simply want to be inside a particular atmosphere. That is why we don't see a restaurant merely as a physical shell where food is served; it should be approached as a space where people build social relationships.

We consider restaurant design within this whole. How a space is lived in matters to us as much as how it looks, and how it works and what kind of relationship it forms with its users are among the fundamental questions of design.

A space first gets to know its people

Every restaurant has its guests. But defining guests only by age, income or demographic characteristics is not enough for design.

The real point is to understand what that person expects from the space.

How does the guest want to spend time here? Are they looking for a more social setting or a calmer atmosphere? Do they want to sit for a long time, or have a quick, fluid experience? Do they want to see their surroundings, or have a more private space of their own?

Each of these questions finds an architectural answer.

The position of the table, the way of sitting, the ceiling height, the intensity of light and the texture of materials tell the user how the space is to be used, while circulation areas and the distance between tables directly shape this experience.

In this sense, restaurant architecture doesn't just shape space; it describes how the space will be lived in as well.

Academic research also addresses restaurant architecture. These studiesshow that the physical environment plays an active role in the guest experience. Lighting, layout, aesthetics, sound, staff and relationships with other guests are not independent parts of the experience; together they form a whole that is perceived as one.

That is why, for us, good restaurant design is much more than the sum of individually beautiful details. What really matters is getting the relationship between the details right.

A restaurant has a rhythm

Every space has a rhythm of its own — and a restaurant feels it more than most.

Guests begin to feel this rhythm as soon as they walk in. Entrance, welcome, bar, table layout, service line, kitchen, circulation and lighting follow one another.

Where do people enter? Where do they head? What do they see first? Where do they stop? Where do they sit? Which route do service staff take?

All of these movements make up the restaurant's invisible architecture.

Light is part of this rhythm. So is material. So is sound. So is empty space.

Sometimes the strongest element of a design is not the material used, but the emptiness left beside it.

Sometimes what matters is not the light source itself, but the shadow the light casts on a surface.

And sometimes the position of a single table can change the perception of the entire space.

That is why, in restaurant architecture, what matters to us is not only what we add. What really matters is what we use, where and how much.

Behind the visible dining room lies another architecture

The face a restaurant shows its guests is in fact only one part of the large system at work.

Kitchen organisation, storage and goods receiving are invisible parts of a restaurant's daily life. Staff circulation, service preparation, the bar, the dishwashing area and technical spaces are part of this invisible whole too.

Guests don't notice most of these directly, but they experience the result of all of them.

The flow of service and how easily staff can move are directly linked to architectural decisions, as are the relationship between kitchen and dining room and the way the tables are used.

That is why, in restaurant architecture, we don't separate architecture from operations.

For us, good design is not just design that looks good in a photograph.

Good design is design that proves itself while it is working.

The guest experience and the operational routine of the business must be resolved within the same plan.

When a brand grows, the language of architecture changes

When a restaurant brand starts to grow in different cities and countries, a new architectural problem arises: how will its identity be preserved?

It is possible to make every location identical; that is the easiest way to standardise a brand. But in architecture terms, the real value lies in rebuilding the same identity in different contexts.

We know that Istanbul and Berlin, Amsterdam and Rotterdam are not the same city. Each city has its own architectural character, user habits, building stock and social life, so a brand's architectural identity must also be able to respond to its place.

This is where the idea of a "language" becomes more meaningful than a "standard".

A brand can have an architectural language, with its own materials, proportions, colours, light, details and spatial habits. But it doesn't have to say the same sentence in every new project.

We see this as creating a space that belongs to its place while preserving the brand's character.

This approach becomes especially important in franchise systems: as a brand grows, it needs not only a visual identity but a transferable architectural system.

We see this approach most clearly in our long-standing work with the OT and 6:45 (Kaybedenler Kulübü) brands. We have been involved in the design of both brands from their very first branches to today: we have designed 28 projects for OT to date, and under the 6:45 umbrella, a total of 21 branches in different formats (meyhane, pub/concert hall and coffee). This process has given us direct experience of how to preserve a brand's identity across dozens of different spaces.

Gastronomy continues inside the space

Restaurant architecture cannot be considered separately from gastronomy.

Food is not just a product that arrives at the table; it carries a geography, a way of producing, a culture and a memory.

This is exactly where Türkiye's gastronomic diversity holds great potential.

The different cuisines stretching from the Black Sea to the Aegean and from the Mediterranean to the Southeast are not just different dishes; each brings its own geography and way of life with it.

Architecture can form another layer of this story.

We don't have to do this directly with traditional motifs.

The choice of a material, the use of light or the proportions of a space can become part of a gastronomic identity, and so can the language of the furniture or the relationship between kitchen and dining room.

At this point, the restaurant's architecture becomes a continuation of the story the kitchen tells.

Just as food carries an identity, the space can carry that identity too.

Tourism studies increasingly address gastronomy's relationship with culture, heritage and local identity. Gastronomy researchers see it not only as consumption but as an important field for cultural transmission and for making local values visible.

In today's architecture, the real issue is not seeing but understanding

Today we can see a restaurant anywhere in the world within seconds, which is an important opportunity for architecture.

But having the visual world so accessible raises another question for design: why do we like what we see?

It is easy to be inspired by a project; understanding the thinking behind it is more important.

You can carry a material, a lighting idea or a piece of furniture over to another project, but transferring it without understanding the context in which the design decision arose falls short.

For us, a reference does not mean repeating an image; it means decoding the design idea behind that image.

Because architecture develops not by multiplying what it sees, but by understanding what it sees and rebuilding it in its own context.

So what is it that we design?

When we look at a restaurant project only in terms of floor area, number of tables or decoration, we miss an important part of architecture.

Because restaurant architecture brings many different subjects together at once: people, gastronomy, business, brand, culture, space. Each has its own truths.

The architect's task is not to put one before the others, but to build the relationship between them.

That is exactly why we don't see restaurant architecture as merely producing an interior. A restaurant's architecture is the ground on which people relate to one another; it is also a business environment where a brand's character takes shape in space, and where the cultural story of a cuisine becomes visible. Guests live all of this anew every day.

So when we design a restaurant, we don't only think about how the walls, tables or light will look. We design how people will move and meet in that space, how they will spend their time and what experience they will leave with.

In the end, what emerges is not just a restaurant, but an atmosphere, a character and a memory.

And this is where, for us, the real value of restaurant architecture begins: designing the moment in which food is experienced, as much as the food itself.

For your restaurant and café projects, explore CO Mimarlık's restaurant design approach and our completed projects.

CO Mimarlık — Restaurant, Café and F&B Architecture